Biography

Clive Cussler

Clive Cussler, the Grand Master of the American action adventure novel, grew up in Alhambra, California. He later attended Pasadena City College for two years, but then enlisted in the Air Force during the Korean War where he served as an aircraft mechanic and flight engineer in the Military Air Transport Service. Upon his discharge, he became a copywriter and later creative director for two of the nation's leading ad agencies. At that time, he wrote and produced radio and television commercials that won numerous international awards one at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.

Cussler began writing in 1965 and published his first novel featuring Dirk Pitt® in 1973. His first nonfiction work, THE SEA HUNTERS, was released in 1996. Because of this work the Board of Governors of the Maritime College, State University of New York considered THE SEA HUNTERS in lieu of a Ph.D. thesis and awarded Cussler a Doctor of Letters degree in May of 1997. It was the first time since the College was founded in 1874 that such a degree was bestowed.

Cussler is the founder the National Underwater & Marine Agency, (NUMA) a 501C3 non-profit organization that dedicates itself to American maritime and naval history. Cussler and his crew of marine experts and NUMA volunteers have discovered over 60 historically significant underwater wreck sites. After verifying their finds, NUMA turns the rights to the artifacts over to non-profits, universities, or government entities all over the world. Some of these finds include the C.S.S. Hunley, best known as the first submarine to sink a ship in battle; the Housatonic, the ship the Hunley sank; the U-20, the U-boat that sank the Lusitania; the Cumberland, sunk by the famous ironclad, Merrimack; the Confederate raider Florida; the Navy airship, Akron; the Republic of Texas Navy warship, Zavala, found under a parking lot in Galveston, Texas; and the remains of the Carpathia, the valiant ship that braved icebergs to rescue the survivor's of the Titanic. In addition to being Chairman of NUMA, Cussler is a fellow in both the Explorers Club of New York and the Royal Geographic Society in London. He has also been honored with the Lowell Thomas Award for outstanding underwater exploration.

A noted collector of classic automobiles, Cussler owns 85 of the finest examples of custom coachwork and 50's convertibles to be found anywhere. They are garaged near Golden, Colorado at the Cussler Museum. Today, Cussler divides his time between the mountains of Colorado and the deserts of Arizona.

Cussler's books are published in more than 40 languages in more than 100 countries with a readership of more than 125 million avid fans.

Clive Cussler

Books by Clive Cussler

As private detective Isaac Bell strives to land a government contract to investigate John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil monopoly, the case takes a deadly turn. A sniper begins murdering opponents of Standard Oil, and soon the assassin—shooting with extraordinary accuracy at seemingly impossible long range—kills Bell’s best witness before detonating a terrible explosion that sets the victim’s independent refinery ablaze. Bell summons his best detectives to scour for evidence. Who is the assassin and for whom did he kill? But the murders have just begun as Bell tracks his phantom-like criminal adversary.

While investigating a toxic outbreak in the Caribbean Sea that may ultimately threaten the United States, Dick Pitt unwittingly becomes involved in something even more dangerous --- a post-Castro power struggle for the control of Cuba. Meanwhile, Pitt’s children, marine engineer Dirk and oceanographer Summer, are on an investigation of their own, which brings them both to Cuba as well --- and squarely into harm’s way.

Husband-and-wife team Sami and Remi Fargo are on a climate-control expedition in the Arctic when they discover a Viking ship in the ice filled with pre–Columbian artifacts from Mexico. As they plunge into their research, tantalizing clues about a link between the Vikings and the legendary Toltec feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl --- and a fabled object known as the Eye of Heaven --- begin to emerge. But so do many dangerous people.

When Kurt Austin is injured attempting to rescue the passengers and crew from a sinking yacht, he wakes with fragmented and conflicted memories. Determined to know the truth, he begins to search for answers, and soon finds himself descending into a shadowy world of state-sponsored cybercrime and uncovering a pattern of vanishing scientists, suspicious accidents, and a web of human trafficking.

When Isaac Bell’s boss and lifelong friend, Joseph Van Dorn, is shot and nearly killed leading the high-speed chase of a rum-running vessel, Bell swears to him that he will hunt down the lawbreakers. When a witness to Van Dorn’s shooting is executed in a ruthlessly efficient manner invented by the Russian secret police, it becomes clear that these are no ordinary criminals. Bell is up against a team of Bolshevik assassins and saboteurs intent on overthrowing the U.S. government of the United States.

In October 1943, a U.S. destroyer sailed out of Philadelphia and supposedly vanished, the result of a Navy experiment with electromagnetic radiation. The story was considered a hoax --- but now Juan Cabrillo and his Oregon colleagues aren’t so sure. As Cabrillo races to find the truth, he discovers there is even more at stake than he could have imagined. But by the time he realizes it, he already may be too late.

Husband-and-wife team Sam and Remi Fargo are in Mexico, when they come upon a remarkable discovery --- the skeleton of a man clutching an ancient sealed pot, and within the pot, a Mayan book, larger than anyone has ever seen. The book contains astonishing information about the Mayans, their cities, and mankind itself. The secrets are so powerful that some people would do anything to possess them --- as the Fargos are about to find out.

Zero point energy is a state of energy contained in all matter everywhere. Nobody has ever found a way to tap into it --- until one scientist thinks he discovers a way. The problem is, his machines also cause great earthquakes, even fissures in tectonic plates. One machine is buried deep underground; the other is submerged in a vast ocean trench. If Kurt Austin, Joe Zavala and the rest of the NUMA team aren’t able to find and destroy them, the world will be on the threshold of a new era of earth tremors and unchecked volcanism.

It is 1902, and a bright, inexperienced young man named Isaac Bell has an urgent message for his boss. Hired to hunt for radical unionist saboteurs in the coal mines, he is witness to a terrible accident that makes him think that something else is going on. Given exactly one week to prove his case, Bell quickly finds himself pitted against two of the most ruthless opponents he has ever known.

It’s the greatest advance in American defense technology in decades --- an attack submarine capable of incredible underwater speeds. However, a key element of the prototype is missing, and the man who developed it is dead. At the same time, ships have started vanishing mid-ocean, usually never to be found again, but when they are, sometimes burned bodies are found aboard. It is up to NUMA director Dirk Pitt and his team to go on a desperate international chase to find the truth.

Husband-and-wife Sam and Remi Fargo and their friend hunt for Attila the Hun's tomb, which supposedly contained a vast amount of treasure. They follow a trail that leads them across the eastern hemisphere and pits them against others who are hungry for the Attila's treasure.

In the middle of the Indian Ocean, a NUMA research vessel is taking water samples at sunset, when a swarm of black particles suddenly attacks the ship, killing everyone aboard. A few hours later, Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala are on their way to the Indian Ocean. What they will find there on the smoldering hulk of the ship will eventually lead them to the discovery of the most audacious scheme they have ever known.

On the ocean liner Mauretania, two European scientists with a dramatic new invention are barely rescued from abduction by the Van Dorn Detective Agency's intrepid chief investigator, Isaac Bell. Unfortunately, they are not so lucky the second time. What are they holding that is so precious? Only something that will revolutionize business and popular culture --- and perhaps something more.

When two ships burst into flames in the same location, Kurt Austin and the rest of the NUMA Special Assignments Team rush to the eastern Atlantic region to investigate --- and find themselves drawn into an African dictator’s complex plot to extort the world’s major nations.

It is 1910, and newspaper publisher Preston Whiteway is offering $50,000 for the first daring aviator to cross America in less than 50 days. He is even sponsoring one of the prime candidates --- an intrepid woman named Josephine Frost --- and that's where Detective Isaac Bell, chief investigator for the Van Dorn Detective Agency, comes in.

Jungles come in many forms. There are the steamy rain forests of the Burmese highlands. There are the lies and betrayals of the world of covert operations. And there are the dark and twisted thoughts of a man bent on near-global domination. To pull off their latest mission, Juan Cabrillo and the crew of the Oregon must survive them all.

In the fourth Dirk Pitt novel from Cussler and son Dirk, evildoers Ozden Aktan Celik and his sister, Maria, who are bent on Muslim domination of the Middle East, plot to blow up sacred Muslim sites and pin the blame on the West.